


samwell high school hockey

by questionableatbest



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: (all of the characters will be there i just tagged the mains), Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Teachers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 14:08:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9610817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/questionableatbest/pseuds/questionableatbest
Summary: “I need you to coach the junior girls hockey team with me and Bittle,” Lardo said, straight and flat and to the point, and Jack just blinked.After a moment, he said, “Um,” which was more than Lardo had expected right off the bat, but she sighed anyways.“You know I wouldn’t ask if we weren’t desperate,” she said, and Jack just blinked again.





	

Part of the reason why the staff at Samwell High School got along so well, was because everybody knew when to keep their mouth shut.

Nobody asked Ransom and Holster if they were dating yet, and nobody asked Shitty about his family, and nobody said anything when Dex got particularly touchy near the end of the month, when rent was due and they hadn’t been paid in a while, and nobody asked Jack Zimmermann about hockey either.

It was an unspoken rule, and it was one that Larissa Duan had spent her first few years as an art teacher aggressively enforcing, so she was more than a little bit surprised to find that, after all of that, she was the one who was breaking it.

Still, desperate times called for desperate measures, so she squared her shoulders, waited for a group of freshmen to pass her in the hall, and then she knocked on Jack’s classroom door.

They both had second period off and third period lunch, so she figured that now was the best time to do it; if it went terribly, they would have time to recover and, if it went as well as she was desperately hoping it would, they would have time to plan.

At least, that’s what Lardo told herself, as she waited for Jack to open the door and reminded herself to breathe. 

She wasn’t betraying one of her best friends’ trust in her.

She was just asking him a question.

A very, very important question, that she all but blurted out when he opened his classroom door moments later, but-

But no. She didn’t do that, because even at her worst, she was about a million times more calm than that.

Instead, she just smiled and said, “Hey Jack,” and Jack smiled back.

“What’s up?” he asked, crossing his arms and leaning against his classroom door in his casual way (which most people confused with his agitated way, his stressed way, and his tired way, but Lardo knew him better than that). 

Of course, because of that, Lardo also knew better than to ask him the question she had in mind in the hall, so she just pursed her lips. “I’ve got a question, actually. Can we talk inside?” she asked, and Jack’s eyebrows raised a fraction of an inch, but he nodded.

“Yeah, what’s up?” he asked again, moving inside and sounding a tiny bit more worried this time, but Lardo just closed the door behind her and sighed.

When she turned back around, Jack was leaning against his desk with his forehead furrowed and his lip between his teeth, and yeah. That was one of his worried looks, and Lardo realized that keeping him waiting was kind of a dick move, so she decided to just get it over with.

“I need you to coach the junior girls hockey team with me and Bittle,” Lardo said, straight and flat and to the point, and Jack just blinked.

After a moment, he said, “Um,” which was more than Lardo had expected right off the bat, but she sighed anyways.

“You know I wouldn’t ask if we weren’t desperate,” she said, and Jack just blinked again.

“I. Uh. I thought Chow was still going to do it?” Jack finally asked, and that was something that Lardo could work with.

“That was before he realized that Farms had  _ twins _ ,” Lardo explained. “Even with him on paternity leave, it’s too much right now.”

“And. Uh. Camilla?”

“She’s helping Farms out with volleyball,” Lardo said, and then she added, “One team per teacher, remember?”

Jack said, “Yeah,” and then he sighed and asked, “That takes Shits, Dex, Nurse, Johnson, Ransom, and Holster out of the picture too, doesn’t it?”

Lardo grinned, and tried to fill it with nothing but sympathy. “Yeah, man. Shits, Johnson, and I have the Senior girls, Dex and Nurse have the Junior boys, and Rans and Holtzy have the Senior boys. I’m just managing, so I can do senior and junior girls, but the rest of them have got to stay where they are.”

Jack closed his eyes and leaned back on his desk and let out another sigh, and Lardo really hated doing this, but she also didn’t see another choice.

Still, she added, “Look, Jack, if it’s too much, we can figure something else out, no questions asked, okay?” 

For a moment, Jack pursed his lips and looked like he was going to take her up on that offer, but then he asked, “Bittle’s the new home ec teacher, right?” and there was interest in his voice, which meant that Lardo might be onto something, so she straightened her shoulders and nodded.

“Yeah, man, and he’s great, I swear, but he also doesn’t have much of a hockey background- only a few years in high school, and intramurals in college- so between me and him, the team’s a bit of a mess right now, and we’ve only had one try out.”

“You- already had a tryout?” Jack asked, and he almost,  _ almost  _ looked sold on the idea of coaching the team, so Lardo decided that honesty was the best move.

“Yeah, last night,” she said, and then she went on with, “And like, the girls are great and Bittle’s not terrible and we’ll probably get by no matter what but, honestly, we could really use you,” and then Jack nodded.

Lardo narrowed her eyes for a moment, because she was pretty sure that the nod meant ‘fine, I’ll do it,’ but she wasn’t positive, but then Jack said, “Yeah, okay, I’ll see what I can do,” and-

And Lardo gave up on being calm and threw herself at Jack in a hug, and Jack caught her and he actually laughed, and Lardo held on tight for a moment before she said, “Thank you,” and then she schooled her expression back into her usual neutral one, and pulled away.

When she did that, she caught a glimpse of something on Jack’s face that was somewhere between nervous, reluctant, and excited, so Lardo smiled and she hoped it was reassuring.

It probably wasn’t and, really, she probably should have brought Shitty to do this with her, but still.

Jack was kind of smiling back, and he was going to coach the team with Bittle, and Lardo wasn’t going to have to tell the ragtag group of girls who’d shown up for practice that they didn’t have a spot to play and, altogether, things were good.

  
  


//

  
  


So Lardo spent second and third period filling Jack in on everything he’d need to know about coaching junior girls hockey, about the girls in question, and about Bittle. 

If he asked a few more question about Bittle than was strictly necessary, than Lardo wasn’t going to say anything.

Instead, she just answered them patiently and said that, no, she didn’t think Bittle had heard about Jack’s draft incident and that, no, he probably wouldn’t care anyways, and also that, no, she didn’t think Bittle was married or currently seeing anyone, and she definitely didn’t point out that one of those questions was not like the others.

Still, by the time third period was over and Lardo was headed back to the art room, she felt good.

She felt like things were working out and she couldn’t remember why she’d doubted herself to begin with, and fourth period was already halfway over by the time Shitty burst into her room which, really, actually took a lot longer than she’d expected.

His entrance was accompanied by the door being flung open and him literally stomping over to her desk, and the fact that literally none of Lardo’s students were surprised by it definitely said something.

Of course, before Lardo could contemplate that, Shitty was actually at her desk, bending down to eye level and staring her down with narrow eyes that would probably intimidate anybody else but, for her part, Lardo just raised an eyebrow.

“What’s up, Knight?” she asked, and he scoffed, because of course that was the kind of stupid thing that he did.

“What’s up?” he asked, repeating her question, and then he scoffed again, and then he repeated, “What’s up?” again, but then Lardo pursed her lips and that was all it took for her to tell Shitty to get to the point, because then he sighed and said, “You talked to Jack without me,” and he actually sounded hurt, so Lardo sighed too.

“If I’d told you, would you have let me?” she asked, and this time Shitty pursed his lips and looked away, and that was all the confirmation she needed to go on with, “Look, Shits, it’s fine. I asked him to coach the team, we talked about it, and he agreed to it. He actually seemed kind of excited, to be honest.”

Shitty narrowed his eyes. “Like, fresh coffee in the teacher’s lounge excited, or annual field trip to the history museum excited?” he asked, and Lardo tapped a stray paintbrush against her bottom lip while she thought about it.

And okay, maybe she drew the paintbrush tapping out a bit longer than necessary because watching Shitty try not to stare at her mouth was fascinating, but that was beside the point. Eventually, she shrugged and said, “Higher than fresh coffee excitement, but lower than the museum levels. Remember when he discovered Drunk History? I’d say about there.”

Shitty nodded, and the fact that that description meant something to them was probably weird, but Lardo decided not to focus on it and, apparently, neither did Shitty. Instead, he asked, “Have you told Bitty?” and Lardo shook her head.

“Nah, but he drove me here today, so I’ll tell him on the way home,” she said, and then she added, “I can’t see him having a problem with it, so,” and that was that.

Shitty stayed for a while longer, talking to Lardo and roaming around, looking at her students’ work, and Lardo answered a few of their questions and offered advice here and there, and she tried not to blush when she caught Shitty staring at her work in progress that was currently off to the side because, really.

Shitty had seen her art a million times before, and the two of them had been friends forever, and they were professionals, goddammit, so Lardo was going to handle her stupid crush like the most motherfucking professional professional around, and suppress it until it went away. 

  
  


//

  
  


The thing about Eric Bittle, was that he was new, so Lardo was still trying to get a read on him.

She knew that she liked him, and she knew that Chowder adored him, and she knew that the students did too, but that was about it and, really, Lardo preferred to know everything about everybody so nobody would surprise her, so yeah.

She’d been trying to read Bittle since he started at SHS in September, and, when she thought about the information she’d compiled so far, she finally thought that she was starting to get somewhere.

For starters, she knew that he lived in her building, and that he baked a lot. She knew that he knows everything about football and figure skating, and just enough about hockey to get by. She also knew that he listened to Beyonce religiously, and that he spent most of his spare time critiquing contestants on various Food Network game shows, and that he was nice and kind and, overall, a good guy, which was probably why Lardo was surprised when Bittle was decidedly less than excited about coaching with Jack.

Still, when Lardo broke the news while they were waiting in traffic, all Bitty said was, “Jack Zimmermann? The tall history teacher, right?” and Lardo had to blink.

“Bitty, you know who Jack is,” she said, slowly, and Bitty smiled, but it was tight and pressed and completely wrong.

“Right, of course, just checking,” he said, and then he cleared his throat and all he said was, “Bless his heart,” and, well.

Lardo had only actually seen him like this once before, when he realized how terrible the schools ovens actually were and, even then, he’d brushed it off.

Here and now, he just kept smiling, and the laugh that told Lardo he’d be okay never came, so after a moment she asked, “Bittle, is there anything I should know?” and she tried to keep her voice even, but there was a chance it was a bit threatening anyways, which she was actually fine with.

If Bittle had a problem with Jack, Lardo would probably end up having a problem with Bittle, because her and Jack had been ride or die since they met, and she wasn’t looking to change that now.

Because of that, she was seriously considering getting out of the car a the next red light, when Bittle sighed.

“Of course I don’t have a  _ problem  _ with him,” he said, and Lardo wasn’t convinced of it at all, but then Bitty went on with, “ _ He’s _ the one who has a problem with  _ me _ ,” and then Lardo realized what was going on.

Still, she just asked, “Oh?” and that was apparently all it took to get Bitty talking, because-

Because then he went on with, “It’s just, I asked him for directions on my first day, and all he did was  _ point _ , and I smiled at him in the hall a few days after that, and he _ looked away _ , and he’s always in the teacher’s lounge when I drop off leftover baked goods, and he just stares at me like I’m the devil, until I leave, and I just don’t know what I did to make him hate me but he definitely does, so.”

Lardo blinked, because that was a lot.

Unfortunately, it also sounded exactly like Jack trying to navigate a crush on the cute new home ec teacher so, yeah, Lardo was going to have to fix that for him.

“Look,” she said, and Bittle did for half a second before he remembered that he was supposed to be driving and turned back to the road, “That’s just Jack. He’s shy and, like, the ultimate introvert, and it takes him a while to get comfortable about new people, but I promise he doesn’t hate you.”

Bittle didn’t look convinced, but he also didn’t argue either. He let out a small huff of air and his expression softened, and Lardo figured that she was winning the argument, so she just kept going.

“He actually seemed excited about coaching with you, so is there any chance you’ll trust me on this one and give him a chance?” she asked, and it took a moment, but Bitty nodded.

“Oh, of course I will,” he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, and Lardo was relieved for half a second, before he asked, “But tell me, if he’s as good as y’all say he is, is there a reason he wasn’t coaching before?” and, yeah.

Okay.

That was definitely not Lardo’s story to tell, even if she couldn't quite believe that Bittle didn't know, so, in the end, she just shrugged and said, “Don't worry about it, dude,” and then she ignored the surprised look that Bitty gave her and changed the subject, and she was grateful when he left it at that.

**Author's Note:**

> (i realize that hs teachers are probably allowed to coach more than one sport but, for the sake of the logistics of this story, let's pretend that they aren't?)
> 
> and like, if you've got this far, let me know what you think?


End file.
